I'm sorry, do you have reservations?

It's almost comical. We're going out of our way, desperately trying to keep from making too many assumptions, get too comfortable, enjoy ourselves too much. Don't make reservations for dinner she says. I don't want you to do something out of the ordinary and resent it later. The worst of it is, she's got the justification of history on her side. She thinks I've resented things this pointless in the past, and punished her for it. How do you tell someone you're all grown up while trying to hide the X-Box 360 controller under the couch?

I'm not afraid of the same things she is. I'm trying to watch myself for new mistakes, not redundancies. A friend at work has dubbed her Girlfriend: The Remix. I like it, it makes me laugh. I'm hoping it's prohetic, though. Same beat, same hook, but a totally different sound. Not a sequel. A remix.

We laugh more now. That's a big plus. We can't keep our hands off each other, another big plus. We still love to talk. The best part, that. She's interesting, I'm not just tolerating the conversation until it's time to go to bed like so many of my contemporaries, I'm actually enjoying the motherfucker.

There's all kinds of downside to dating with someone with this much history. It's a proven failure, your friends give you more crap, every sentence has the weight of five years of memories behind it. There's a huge upside, though. There's no bullshit--We know each other too well, and we know what we want. We can't read each other's minds, but there's none of the deliberate shyness that most early relationships suffer through. Listen, if I don't want to talk anymore, I'll just tell you. Life is much simpler this way.

All that said, she's wrong on one count. I never resented doing things for her, going the extra mile, trying to make it special. That's one of the fun parts of dating. I resented being expected to do so, and as long this stuff still surprises her, I've got no reservations at all.